One of the nice things about cookies is once you've learned a few basic recipes (shortbread, spice, chocolate chip etc) most other recipes are just variations on that theme. Without spending a lot of time becoming a baking expert, you're able to quickly start modifying your own recipes. You get to be creative and almost always the results are totally delicious.

For example, I was at the store the other day and I saw they had hazelnuts in the bulk bins, for not too expensive. I got (probably a little too) excited and bought a bunch. i didn't know what I wanted to do with them but I knew I wanted to make something delicious

So I was thinking, what can I make with hazelnuts. And cookies were the obvious answer. My first thought was to do something with shortbread but I had just made shortbread so I wanted to do something else. I thought I should use some maple syrup too because I love it and it seemed like it would go really well with hazelnuts. I ended up going with a pretty standard recipe, similar to chocolate chip cookies.

They turned out really well, which is always gratifying. And by really well I mean they tasted delicous, which is really the most important thing. Normally I like my cookies straight out of the oven (actually we don't really need to involve the oven at all, cookie batter, yum!), but these I liked after they had been in an airtight container overnight. They softened up a little and were much chewier. I think maybe because I cooked the second batch a bit too long.

I would encourage you to try different flavor combinations. It's a lot of fun and results in cookies, which makes everyone happy.